Required Sensibilities to Canada’s Antisemitic Threat Landscape

A Letter to the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg Re: CMHR’s Upcoming Nakba Exhibit

Jun 03, 2026

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Required Sensibilities to Canada’s Antisemitic Threat Landscape

To the Attention of:

The Hon. Marc Miller, Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture
Leadership Team and Board of Trustees, The Canadian Museum of Human Rights

CC: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police; Vancouver Police Department; Winnipeg Police Service; Toronto Police Service; Ottawa Police Service; Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal; Canadian Security Intelligence Service

Re: Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ Upcoming Nakba Exhibit

June 3, 2026

Dear Hon. Minister Miller and CMHR Leaders and Trustees:

I trust this letter finds you all in good health.

I am writing to address sensibility gaps in the upcoming exhibit, “Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present,” scheduled to launch this month at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. As we are already witnessing an antisemitism crisis in Canada, I am asking for the exhibit to undergo due process with appropriate consultation to ensure it will not inadvertently serve to promote antisemitism in an already volatile environment against Canadians of Jewish ancestry. It appears Jewish community advocates have been expressing their concerns to CMHR but CMHR has not been receptive to their concerns.

Prioritizing Domestic Safety and Stability Over Foreign Politics

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights is a federally funded museum and must ensure its presentations uphold both information integrity and build bridges toward national cohesion rather than reinforce fissures in our country. Canadian Identity and Culture and its institutions have an important role to help bring our cultural mosaic together to a secure home base. That home base is patriotism and the values of respect and responsibility to preserve peace and unity in our democracy.

I am mindful that Middle East relations is complex. Regardless of one’s political interpretation of conflict in the Middle East, diaspora communities in Canada, whether Palestinian or Jewish, both carry intergenerational pain. Their wellbeing and safety should be prioritized over foreign politics. Canada must be a country where safety is accessible to all who choose to make Canada their home.

Our country should not be permitted to become a theatre of imported conflicts that stoke intercultural hostilities or projected hate and violence. This requires some boundaries for how political activism and grievances are played out on Canadian soil, especially when they are causing great civilian harm as we are seeing today with overwhelming antisemitism fuelled by conflict in the Middle East.

This is a matter of leadership and fostering stable race relations.

I urge the Minister and CMHR to give careful consideration to a larger picture of Canada’s cultural mandate. CMHR along with all publicly funded institutions must prioritize proper ambassadorship of Canada. This means as a publicly funded museum, CMHR’s focus should be on furthering Canada’s interest.

But as it currently stands, the optics of CMHR’s lack of interest for due consultation conveys disinterest in accountability and more pressing aspirations to advance foreign interests against a targeted foreign country than the safety of Canadians, who happen to be Jewish.

Redemptive Storytelling

Storytelling has been inherent to human civilization throughout the ages. But stories must be told with thoughtfulness and responsibility, especially if they bear the name of the Government of Canada.

Is it not the duty of our museums to educate the public by telling Canada’s story with all its guts and glory to bolster patriotism and also its shortcomings to ensure bad history isn’t repeated in Canada? When museums tell stories of injustice, is it not to promote authentic reconciliation, healing, and unity among the generations and our communities?

The path forward requires redemptive goals and methodologies. There must be a larger vision than merely promoting political vilification, condemnation and victimization. The methodology must elicit positive outcomes that flow from authentic bridge building. Otherwise, hostility, division and impasses continue to grow and perpetuate. This works against Canada’s interest. We are seeing this today on too many fronts.

The Necessity of Consultation to Address Sensibilities to Today’s Escalated Antisemitic Threat Landscape

The Minister and his cabinet colleagues have purported that Bill C-9 was designed to help law enforcement better tackle hate crimes. If that’s what the Minister sincerely stands by, then he should understand that our law enforcement establishments carry a critical part with frontline insights and prosecution of hate crimes. Additionally, Canada’s intelligence apparatuses have important data on threat landscapes. They also understand the vulnerabilities of our national security when a country’s unity begins to erode.

As victims of hate speech, intimidation, boycotts, vandalism, assault, and terrorism, Jewish Canadians have the cultural sensibilities toward the language and kind of narratives that promote the targeting of their community. They live in a threat landscape like no other ethnic minority community in Canada today and since World War II. Hate crimes against Jews are overrepresented, despite only constituting approximately 1% of Canada’s population. Their input is necessary to the process.

I hereby urge the Minister and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights to consult with the Jewish community, law enforcement, and intelligence apparatuses to ensure the content and delivery of the Nakba exhibit factors in required sensibilities given the current state of escalated threats and crimes against Canadian Jews.

Failure to do so sends the message that government funded institutions can be exploited as a platform to promote imported foreign conflict and hate crimes. This is reckless, irresponsible, and erodes government credibility.

A Call for Decisive Steps to End the Gross Violation of Civil Rights of Canadian Jews

Minister Miller, if you are serious about tackling antisemitism and if CMHR’s leadership is serious about championing human rights, then it is past due and necessary for all to consider the Charter rights of Canadians in our own backyard.

The basic civil rights of Jewish Canadians to have safe and peaceful access to livelihood, education, everyday tasks, and worship have been grossly violated because of an imported foreign conflict that has been permitted to fester on Canadian soil. This reflects poorly on Canada’s elected and appointed officials. It exposes a lack of leadership that has essentially enabled the deepening of intercultural hostilities among Canadians to this point of crisis for Jewish Canadians.

Increasing funding for security and police escort has become a necessity to protect Jewish Canadians from violence and intimidation in their neighbourhoods, and places of business, education, recreation, and worship. But this does not address the spread and normalization of antisemitism itself. Neither does forming more committees to combat antisemitism replace the critical need for political will to resolve the issues at the root. It comes down to plain old decisive action—prevention, intervention and prosecution—not silence, complicity or deflection.

The Minister and CMHR have an opportunity to help change the course of antisemitism in Canada and promote intercultural peace by ensuring the Nakba exhibit is presented with due consideration of the normalized antisemitic environment that Jewish Canadians are forced to tolerate today. Upon consultation, if there is an iota of potential for the exhibit to incite or legitimize antisemitism in Canada, it should not be launched. It simply comes down to putting the safety and basic rights of our own citizens and domestic stability first above foreign affairs.

I have cc’d the RCMP, and police services in urban centres where Jewish Canadians are most targeted (Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal) along with CSIS for their awareness. They are an important part of the solution to curbing the rise of antisemitic hate crimes and guarding the safety of all Canadians.

Having served as a Shadow Minister for Canadian Heritage during my term, I can appreciate that the Canadian Heritage portfolio requires great cultural sensibilities. I also celebrate the wonderful opportunities under the Canadian Heritage portfolio to boost Canada’s morale. I hope the Minister and CMHR will opt for both.

Thank you for taking time to read this letter. I hope we can all move forward together for a more cohesive and safer Canada.

Sincerely,

Nelly Shin
Former Member of Parliament

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